The World of Gerard Mercator

by Andrew Taylor

  Even for a man with de Corte's impeccable record, it took some courage to stand up to the officers of the Inquisition in this way. "Master Gerard Mercator enjoys a good reputation. At Leuven, he leads a religious and honorable life, and is uncorrupted by heresy," he wrote.2It was as enthusiastic an endorsement as he could compose, but far from helping the prisoner, it simply alienated the stern regent.

  Mary's personal sympathies lay with the arguments of the reformers, but the threat of Duke William's troops had put steel in her soul. She was fiercely loyal to her brother and dedicated to the extermination of heretics who might prove disloyal to him. She could be charming and feminine when she chose—the Hungarian National Museum has a flowing gown of the finest green Italian silk damask that was made for her around 1520—but she would accept no prevarication on behalf of suspected traitors. How dared de Corte intervene on such a man's behalf, she demanded in an angry reply.

  De Corte had no hesitation in standing by the accused man, and he stated in a second letter that he was sure that the investigators were mistaken to suppose that Mercator had been trying to flee the authorities when he left Leuven for Rupelmonde. Mercator's work as a geographer and surveyor often necessitated long absences, and he had frequently been away working for the archbishop, for the bishop of Arras—the Granvelle name again—and even for the emperor himself, he added silkily. And as for allegations of Lutheranism, he protested: "I would have no wish to excuse it if I knew him to be corrupted by heresy—far from it, I would know how to carry out my duty to suppress evil."3

  He then went to the university authorities to seek their help. Despite the offense that had been caused years earlier by Mercator's long absence in Antwerp, and despite the anxiety about his religious and philosophical attitudes, the scholastic community stood by him. Pierre Was, abbe of Ste. Gertrude at Leuven, was chaplain to the university, and he was persuaded to write to Mary, claiming academic privilege on Mercator's behalf. He was known for the strictness of his rule at the abbey, and he was punctilious in demanding Leuven's ancient rights. The Inquisition, he said, had no right to hold a member of the university, who could be tried only by a tribunal of the university itself. That was true enough—the rector had held the sole right of jurisdiction over members of the university ever since its foundation—but legalistic quibbles and objections that the Inquisition was overstepping its power were never likely to succeed. All the abbe's letter managed to achieve was another angry reply. Mercator had forfeited all his privileges by fleeing to Rupelmonde, said Mary of Hungary, ignoring Pierre de Corte's earlier protestations, and if Pierre Was did not take care, he might find himself the subject of a charge from the Inquisition as well.

  There were more desperate pleas for Mercator's freedom, including one from the current rector of the university, Francois Van Som. He was a servant of the Inquisition himself, and no soft touch for heretics— Francisco de Enzinas, a Spanish reformist who saw the purge, described him as an inquisitor who was "drunk with arrogance and pride . . . full of deceits, deceptions, subtleties, blindness and cruelty . . . a devil incarnate"4—and yet even he was persuaded to throw his considerable influence behind Mercator.

  There are no detailed records of Mercator's interrogation, but Enzi­nas told of a young woman, Catherine Sclerckx, questioned repeatedly about Christian doctrine by teams of philosophers and theologians, so Mercator's questioning was probably similar. Did she believe, like a good Catholic, in asking the saints in Heaven and the priesthood on Earth for their intercession with God? they asked. Was it not presumptuous, even impudent, to dare to pray to God himself, as the reformers did?

  Catherine replied with a feisty speech in favor of a personal, direct relationship with God that left no room for priests or saints. If God should call to her, she asked her interrogators, should she tell him that she preferred not to reply until she had St. Peter and St. Paul at her side? This was an argument that left them with no alternative but to convict her out of hand as a Lutheran and a heretic. She was lucky to escape with her life, and a fine of four hundred florins—a working man's wage for nearly four years.

  Mercator would have faced similar twisting, provocative lines of questioning, his interrogators sometimes smiling and seeming friendly, even sympathetic, as they tried to tempt him into some doctrinal indiscretion. It can have done him no harm, though, that the name of Granvelle kept cropping up in the interrogations. The chancellor, Nicholas Perrenot de Granvelle, the inquisitors told Catherine, was an intermediary with the emperor just as the Church was with God; so Mercator's close links with the family may have provided some proof of his loyalty.

  Today, four and a half centuries on, what Mercator had done or said to bring du Fief and his soldiers to his door can only be guessed at. He had been circumspect while he was at Leuven, but somewhere he must have let slip an incautious word—about his views on Aristotle and the creation of the world, perhaps. In his cell, he could only guess what the investigators might know, which was precisely as they wanted it.

  As THE CASES AGAINST the group of forty-three pressed slowly ahead, there was always a danger that Mercator would be incriminated by another of the suspects. After all, under the threat of the physical tortures available to the judges of the Inquisition, men and women might blurt out any name they thought their interrogators might like to hear. The inquisitors might hang their victims by their wrists from the ceiling, jerking their shoulders from their sockets by tying lead weights to their feet. They might employ the toca, slowly pouring more and more water down a linen strip that had been thrust into the victim's throat, or the potro, tightening cords around his or her naked body with the slow turn of a ratchet. Few people resisted; usually, the threat of the torture was enough.

  The Inquisition was particularly interested in establishing if the suspects had met regularly, whether for worship or Bible-reading or any other heretical purpose. Early in the investigation, one of the women who had been seized, fifty-eight-year-old Antoinette van Rosmers, admitted that she had received such visits from some of the accused, but listed others with whom she said she had had no contact. Among that second group was "Meester Gheert getrouwt hebbende Scellekens dochtere"(Master Gerard, who married the daughter of Schellekens).

  Mercator would never have seen that reassuring record, for one of Pierre du Fief's most effective tactics was silence. Nor would he have known that he had still more to fear from a different direction. Du Fief's men had uncovered nothing at his home, no prayers or hymns written in Flemish rather than Latin, no forbidden books or incriminating letters such as were enough to send many suspects to their deaths—but they still believed that they could find written proof of his heresy.

  On May 21, du Fief sent his soldiers to Mechelen, on the assumption that whoever had denounced Mercator must have had some information about the monastery of the Minorite Friars there, the sect with which he had been in contact during his time in Antwerp more than ten years before. He was believed to have met with Franciscus Monachus, that dangerous reformist and critic of Aristotle; he had probably spoken with him and spent time in his cell—but he had certainly written him letters. The Inquisition had its spies everywhere and knew about Mercator's correspondence with Franciscus. There are no details recorded—the official record simply notes tersely that "the Friars of Mechelen have suspect letters from him"—but the bailiff was sent to read whatever evidence there might be, and to produce anything he could find that might be used against the accused man.

  For the rest of the prisoners, the torture began in earnest early in June, with the screams of both men and women, according to Enzinas, echoing through the streets of Leuven. If Barbe had the stomach for it, she could have seen for herself something of the misery with which her husband was threatened. At the monastery in Leuven, close by her home, a scaffold was erected to which a sickly, aging priest named Paul de Roovere was marched for his public humiliation and examination. He was another of the forty-three suspected, like Mercator, of Lutheran heresy, and had app
eared on the first list that Antoinette van Rosmers had given to the inquisitors, the list of suspects she admitted had visited her. There was still more damning evidence: The search of his home had been successful, and the Inquisition had found books and writings which they said proved his guilt.

  Enzinas described the scene as the soldiers dragged him through the streets to the scaffold: "He was a small man, long-bearded and pale, haggard and almost shrivelled and wasting away with the grief and hardship he had suffered . . . a dead body, the shadow of a man rather than a man."5

  Behind him in the slow procession marched two senior figures from the University of Leuven, taking their formal place in the awesome spectacle. There was no need for a trial; De Roovere was no Catherine Sclerckx. Under threat of execution, he crumbled, confessed his guilt, repented, and threw his books into the flames. He, at least, was saved from following them into the fire: The Inquisition spared his life because he had bowed to their authority, and sent him off to prison. For the rest of his days he was shut up alone in a tiny cell in Vilvorde Prison, between Brussels and Mechelen—the same prison where Tyndale had died—kept alive on a meager diet of bread and water. Such was the mercy of the Inquisition to those who challenged the authority of the Church.

  The priest's public humiliation was a scene deliberately designed to terrify the population. Even if Barbe herself kept away, she must have heard of the gruesome spectacle. For those who defied the interrogators, there was even more suffering. Two of the accused, Jean Schats and Jean Vikart, refused to repent and were burned at the stake. To save yourself, you had to repent, but to repent, you had first to admit your guilt—and confession was not always followed by clemency. Antoinette van Rosmers—the woman whose testimony had helped to save Mercator thus far—confessed, but on June 15 she was buried alive. So was Catherine Metsys, who confessed along with her husband, the sculptor Jean Beyaerts. He was beheaded; that was as far as the mercy of the Inquisition extended. Even Paul de Roovere's sentence in Vilvorde Prison was little more than a living death, which dragged on for years.

  Mercator's fate still hung in the balance at this point, four months after his arrest. Everyone involved in his case waited while, in Meche­len, the bailiff did his work. Finally, in September, the heavy wooden gates opened again, and Mercator stepped back into the light.

  Du Fief had watched and waited, and had to let him go. Mercator would never know exactly what happened. Perhaps his influential contacts at the emperor's court had applied pressure behind the scenes, or perhaps the appeals of his friends at Leuven had been more successful than they appeared. Maybe the investigators had simply finished their work and concluded that he had no case to answer. The Inquisition never volunteered reasons for its decisions, and few people pressed for them.

  There is, though, one fascinating, cryptic clue as to what might eventually have won Mercator's release. In the margin of the single sheet of paper that bore Mercator's name and the original damning reference to suspicious letters held by the monks of Mechelen was a brief note, with an illegible signature scribbled underneath. It read simply " no h" which might mean "non habent" (they do not have them).6The bailiff, then, failed in his search for incriminating documents. If there had been crucial letters from Mercator's correspondence, perhaps one of the monks got there first and spirited them away, or perhaps Mercator had been sufficiently cautious all those years earlier. Either way, the terse note told Pierre du Fief that, this time at least, his men had failed. They had no evidence to support their case against Mercator, and the bureaucratic little scribble authorized his release.*

  The religious purge of which his arrest had been a part ground on through the rest of 1543 and much of the following year. By the time it was over, many communities of Protestants, and many groups of friends simply dedicated to the idea of reform in the Catholic Church, had been wiped out completely. Often, whole families were arrested together, questioned, tortured, and sent to the stake. Mercator had come as close as he could to the flames without being burned; he must have felt an overwhelming relief as he swore the oath of secrecy that was invariably demanded of those prisoners lucky enough to be set free. As his oath demanded, he would never talk about his imprisonment, about anything he had been asked, or anything he had experienced. Only once, in a letter to Antoine de Granvelle written soon after his release, did he mention his imprisonment—referring to it as his "most unjust persecution."7

  THE CRUEL TREATMENT of the Inquisition pushed many of its victims toward bitterness and greater religious extremism, and made them more determined in their beliefs, but Mercator's months in Rupelmonde Fort left a different mark. He was no revolutionary to be spurred to greater efforts, but a man who wanted to get on with his life in peace. Always cautious by nature, he became even more wary about speaking his mind on any subject that might be contentious. He remained, in theory at least, a believer in the reform of the Church, but he would never again risk attracting the attention of the Inquisition.

  Once free, he made his study his sanctuary and locked himself away with his books and his instruments. This was a wise move—the religious authorities might be less likely to trouble a hardworking scholar and a merchant of impeccable background—but it was also no doubt an emotional refuge. Work was one way to get over the physical and mental effects of his incarceration, a journey back into a familiar and reassuring landscape. The study of the ancients offered contact with unchanging wisdom, while the concentration demanded by engraving and other manual tasks left no time to dwell on what he had been through. And he badly needed the money. A year spent trapped behind Leuven's city walls for fear of William's invading soldiers had crippled his business even before he had been dragged off to prison—nobody wanted to buy maps when the land itself was ablaze. Seven months in Rupelmonde Fort had brought him to the brink of ruin.

  Mercator went to work finishing the globes and surveying and astronomical instruments that Charles V had ordered from him eighteen months before. They were the product of months of filing, smoothing, shaping, and measuring that had been interrupted by his spell in prison—precise, delicate, and finely crafted enough for any enthusiast's shelf. Charles received them with delight at his court in Brussels, but although he was an avid collector, he was no mere dilettante. No sooner had the long-delayed consignment arrived than the instruments were packed up in cases to accompany him on his latest military campaigns against the rebellious Protestant princes of Germany. He would use these instruments to help him study the landscapes of his campaigns, choose the ground on which to fight, and draw up battle plans that took account of the lay of the land.

  In Germany, as in the Netherlands, religious and political dissent were inextricably intertwined. Protestantism was one way for the German princes to assert their independence from an emperor whose power they had always resented, while for Charles—"God's standard bearer"—the defense of Catholicism was a sacred duty. Both Nicholas de Granvelle and his son Antoine argued against war—the brutal repression of the defenseless people of the Netherlands was one thing, military campaigning against well-armed and determined armies in Germany quite another. But the emperor was immovable. He had struggled in vain for fifteen years to seek doctrinal and political compromises, and had become convinced that force of arms rather than negotiation might keep the Protestant states within the Catholic fold and enforce their loyalty to the empire.

  Racked by gout and crippled by asthmatic attacks that would sometimes prevent him from speaking, he left Brussels with his troops on a long, straggling march to Ingolstadt on the Danube, deep in southern Germany. There, in the snow of a bitter German winter in 1546, he set up camp beneath the city walls, face-to-face with the Lutheran armies.

  For all his physical difficulties, Charles was an inspirational leader in battle. For six days, he rode around his lines under a constant barrage of artillery fire, apparently careless both of his safety and his physical ailments, and laughing at the dire warnings of his chancellor. With him, he had the surveying i
nstruments that Mercator had made—until a surprise raid on the farm where they were being stored overnight left the house and its outbuildings in flames and the delicate instruments reduced to ashes and a few lumps of twisted metal. The raid had little effect on the outcome of the battle; for all their superiority in artillery, the Lutheran forces were badly led and indecisive, and withdrew to leave Charles in control of much of southern Germany. At this moment of military triumph, he found time to send an urgent message to Mercator's workshop in Leuven. His precious instruments had been destroyed, and he wanted Mercator to make him some more.

  *Tyndale fled England as a suspected heretic in 1524, and over the next eleven years, he prepared English translations of the New Testament and the Pentateuch. These were smuggled into England, where copies were seized and burned. He was arrested in Antwerp in 1535 and condemned on a charge of heresy.

  "Today, apart from a single tower rebuilt in the nineteenth century, there are only ditches where Rupelmonde Fort once stood. Its high stone walls and seventeen towers have crumbled away.

  Chapter Eleven

  Two New Arrivals

  FEW SKILLS WERE MORE IMPORTANT for prosperity in the six­teenth century than the ability to be on two sides at once. Simple discretion might have been enough to keep a man unnoticed and safe if he was lucky, but to thrive he needed friends, clients, and patrons wherever he could find them. The Flemish painter Anthonis Mor was known as Antonio Moro in Spain, and Sir Anthony More when Mary Tudor sat for him in England. Within a few years of finishing his portrait of Antoine de Granvelle, who tortured and executed opponents of Spanish rule in the Netherlands with such enthusiasm, he was painting Granvelle's bitter enemy William of Orange, the leader of the revolt against Spain. National boundaries, religious differences, political rivalries— all these were nothing to a man of ambition.